Scientology and Responsibility

Something I want to comment on is a point Mike Rinder brings up at his blog. I didn't understand this until quite recently. In Scientology Hubbard used one set of statements for people outside Scientology and very new to the group and he used a very different set of ideas for various groups that are deep in Scientology.

Mike Rinder pointed it out in a way in several posts at his blog and recently I read Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. In her book she explains cults in ways I have not seen before including showing how they routinely have propaganda which is intended for outsiders and New recruits and contrasted it against indoctrination which has different ideas, there is some overlap but also extreme differences, and Mike Rinder has contrasted the propaganda against the indoctrination and you can see they are contradictory and make Scientology packed with hypocrisy.

In Scientology there is the belief that intention is cause and a thetan must intend something for it to happen. When an accident happens it is not acceptable to say you didn't intentionally do anything. If you drop something or get in a car crash someone is blamed in Scientology. If you lost a book you are blamed.

In propaganda Scientology pretends to be a normal group that is vulnerable and victimized by evil bigots. But this is not the indoctrination which occurs internally.

Mike Rinder presented the following quotes at his blog to illustrate how Scientology claims that people are entirely responsible for everything they experience. Oddly this disappears whenever Scientology wants to claim to be a victim which it discourages people from doing internally.

Hubbard’s Advanced Procedures and Axioms book:
"A soldier shot on the field of battle may “blame” the sniper, the Selective Service, the stupidity of government, but he nevertheless had full responsibility not only for being there and getting shot but for the sniper, Selective Service and the stupidity of government.

You may locate any rationalization cycle merely by finding any mis-emotion such as antagonism, anger, fear, grief or apathy on the part of the preclear for anything or anybody. You will find then a cycle wherein the preclear considered himself affected by environment, blamed environment (and environment contains all dynamics including self), failed to make the blame stick and received the consequences, thus losing self-determinism, thus getting controlled by environment, thus getting aberrated, thus getting and using the service facsimile.

The auditor is not seeking the point where the preclear accepts the harm which came to him as his fault. The auditor is seeking the point where the preclear decided it was not his responsibility and then the earlier point of refusal of responsibility. " End quote

Ron Hubbard defined responsibility as, “the ability and willingness to assume the status of full source and cause for all efforts and counter-efforts on all dynamics;” and “full responsibility is not fault; it is recognition of being cause.” End quote

In HCOB, 2 Nov 1970, entitled, Responsibility, Hubbard wrote, “The basic wonder is that people police themselves. Out of a concept of good they conceive themselves to be bad, and after that seek every way they can to protect others from self. A person does this by reducing his own ability. He does it by reducing his own activity. He does this by reducing his own knowingness.” End quote

Hubbard penned another HCOB by the same title, dated 23 Dec 1959, in which he wrote, “When one falls away from responsibility on the various dynamics he can then become less and less able to influence those dynamics and therefore becomes a victim of them. One must have done to other dynamics those things which other dynamics now seem to have the power to do to him. Therefore, one can be injured. One can lose control. One can become, in fact a zero of influence and a vacuum for trouble.” End quote